Bringing Broadband to Every Corner: The Challenges and Innovation of Reaching Rural Areas
Imagine trying to build an expansive network through towering mountains, dense forests and scorching deserts—all while battling winter blizzards and summer heat waves. This is the reality for crews building broadband networks in rural America, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible to connect even the most remote communities.
The rise of remote work, telehealth, and online education has made broadband access a critical lifeline, bridging the gap between urban and rural areas. While offering a lifeline to connect the unconnected is essential, building these networks presents unique engineering challenges.
“One of the most important factors that determines the complexity is whether the infrastructure is aerial or underground,” explains Curtis Knittle, Vice President of Wired Technologies at CableLabs. “For aerial deployments, extreme conditions at both ends of the spectrum pose challenges. In extreme winter conditions, cold weather and wind slows progress, impacting the workers installing fiber cabling. Similarly, scorching summers create hazardous working conditions.”
For underground deployments, transportability itself plays a crucial role.
“Extreme winter climates not only impact the workers, but also freeze the ground, making underground drilling extremely difficult. Luckily, in many cases, the cables are buried deep enough to avoid these freezing temperatures,” Knittle explains. “The bigger concern tends to be the characteristics of the terrain. Drilling through rocky ground increases costs and extends schedules. Similarly, terrain containing cliffs presents a challenge, demanding along with unavoidable increases.”
Protecting sensitive network equipment is paramount. "Typically, devices deployed in these extreme conditions must be designed and manufactured to support industrial temperature ranges, typically defined as -40°C to +85°C (-40° to 185°F," Knittle clarifies.
"The device housing must also be waterproof.” Often, outdoor network devices are shielded in nodes or cabinets.
These enclosures must be waterproof and properly ventilated to dissipate heat generated by equipment.
Expanding into sparsely populated rural areas introduces unique logistical hurdles.
“Facility existence is a key issue."
Knittle notes, "New facilities, such as headends, hubs, or central offices are often required to support network equipment, including devices like Cable Modem Termination Systems (CMTSs) and Optical Line Terminals (OLTs). Additionally, we often have to install long haul optical links to backhaul data to and from the main service provider facilities.”
Power becomes another hurdle. While network installations occur throughout the country mirroring infrastructure building across a range of environments and climates. "While facilities easily have power readily available. Many devices needed for residential data service are located in the outside plant, often miles away. Connecting these devices requires flexibility and careful planning.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle is distance.
"Many of the technologies developed for fiber to Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) deployments are limited by distance", Knittle notes. "For example, hub-based optical line terminals are typically limited to a range between 20km and 30km, depending on how many homes are connected to the optical distribution network.”
This brings us to perhaps the most significant issue – cost. The expansive area covered in rural areas means that few people are serviced over large distances.
"Building facilities, installing the outside plant, and bringing in all the necessary network devices in sparley populated areas can make the cost per connected home exorbitant,
On the other hand, a variety of solutions are being explored to overcome these challenges. Network engineers are constantly innovating and developing new technologies to make broadband deployment in rural areas more efficient and cost-effective also.”
